Frenetic ramblings from the start of the "War on Terror" logging my attempts to film outside Finsbury park mosque over 3 years and sitting through all the subsequent court cases. These days I write about whatever and generally stay out of trouble. Do visit Youtube.com/malungtvnews

"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.

October 24, 2006

Bill Hicks, still the TV guru of TV gurus. I was lucky enough to see him live in Birmingham UK. He wasn't that good, obviously tired from telling the same jokes over and over again but the audience were with him all the way. He stood up at a specific point in time and with this performance he caught the mood of a generation. Its such a shame he's not alive now. Watch the rest of this here

But our media -- West and East -- report this, when at all, as some kind of sidebar on the terror war; as if the Muslim leaders had merely accepted an “apology” from the Pope for having hurt some Muslims’ feelings.

This is why we have religions. Because journalism cannot tell us what we need to know.

"The Kabul puppet regime has failed to establish peace and stability as well as to control narcotics," he said, adding members of the government were involved in the opium trade.

Officials and analysts say the Taliban is partly funded by drug lords underwriting fighting and insecurity to keep the police and the law from their poppy fields and smuggling routes.

Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin, and its crop is expected to jump about 60 percent this year.

Talking to reporters after Eid prayers at the presidential palace, Karzai did not comment on Omar's message, but called on Afghans not to be swayed by the Taliban.

"My message to those who are being used by strangers and killing their people and their children, destroying their homes, my message is to free themselves from the grip of menace," he said. "That menace has been destroying Afghanistan for years.

"I ask them to come to their country and free themselves from being used by others and work to build their country not to destroy it."

A weekend deadline by the kidnappers of an Italian photojournalist in the south for the handover by Italy of an Afghan convert to Christianity from Islam passed with no word from them.

The news however, is worse. You may remember, that when Iraqi police stations were being attacked the police would simply run away - leaving all their gear for the militia. MG Peterson says that this is no longer happening; which is good news.

Well, it would be good news if that behavior hadn't been replaced by something even worse: active militia activity by the police. Yes, the reason they are no longer running away from the militia is because they ARE the militia.

A key government weapon in the struggle to win hearts and minds is the decision to fund covertly an Islamic website appealing for moderation. A classic of New Labour terminology, it is called the Radical Middle Way. Government documents disclose that the site is "run as a grassroots initiative by Muslim organisations". However, it has "most of its financial backing from the Foreign Office and Home Office". The site uses video and podcasts to spread an "alternative message" to young Muslims. Some content is available through the iTunes website with no indication that it is effectively an arm of Government....

ditto from me. I always felt respected and learned a lot from your blog. Good luck to you and bless you for doing the work that you do. My wife is and has been a caring geriatric nurse for 25 years and would echo what you say about the elderly not being visited by family.Even tholugh you and I are often on opposite ends of an issue, selfishly I will miss your blog because it is the one that I most often directed my government students to read as a conservative voice of reason that had high standards for the treatment of people with differing views and to read about well researched conservative and liberal debates. Thank you for the blog I will miss it.patricks | 10.18.06 - 4:12 pm | #

The £6 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country’s prime minister.

The production went on general release in Germany a fortnight ago and has had full houses ever since. More than 130,000 people, most of them young Muslims, saw the film in the first five days of its opening. At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, Valley of the Wolves was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men. They clapped furiously when the Turkish hero of the film was shown blowing up a building occupied by the United States military commander in northern Iraq.

In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a US commander called Sam, played by Billy Zane. The audience responded by standing up and chanting “Allah is great!”

My girlfriend took me to see Rosas at the Sadlers Wells. I hated it but its good to have a strong reaction I suppose. Lots of pretentious people dancing really pretentiously to annoying pretentious music. My girlfriend says it was

"a day in the life" and enjoyed the "interaction of sexual imagery" or something like that.

October 13, 2006

October 12, 2006

Abu Hamza preaches against shopping your Muslim brothers to the Police, but in the same sentence speaks out unequivocally against terrorist acts in this country. If the first bit gets to the TV but the second doesn't have we as a nation been told a "half truth"?

Pre 7/7, if this was WIDELY PUBLICIZED would we have been safer?

This is about how the news from Finsbury Park was made. The journalist in the blue suit is Dan Rivers, then of ITN. Not sure who the guy in the brown jacket is. The tall guy in the long black coat is Vivian White from Panorama who seemed pretty cool to me.

I've often seen the concept of Malung TV News as my "Sympathy for the Devil" project. In this case "the Tabloid Devil" believes himself to be on the side of God. You might have noticed that I haven't put a lot of Hamza's words into my movies so far. To be honest I thought he was a bit boring and as you will see, I struggled to hold my camera still.

I've edited this as real time as possible. The whole concept of a "street protest mosque" was really fascinating me at the time and I was enjoying the high drama of it all. Of Hamza's posse who would speak to me, all gave the impression they thought only a nutter would bomb in this country. If they hadn't I'd have stopped filming. I scare very easily. ...

October 11, 2006

Have you ever wondered, as I have, how it can ever be possible to buy brand new clothes in supermarkets for £3 for a pair of jeans? Or £4 for a shirt or less? Well one of the answers lies somewhere in darkest Bangladesh.

Channel 4 News has carried out an investigation over four months trying to track how garments get from Bangladesh's A to Britain's B. The B in this case is Tesco, who have an ethical policy of which they are proud.

Indeed they even audit the factories that supply them. But as we shall reveal tonight this is not the whole story.

We have secretly filmed inside four factories belonging to two established Tesco suppliers and have discovered child workers there making Tesco's own label 'Florence and Fred' clothing.

And what's more it turns out that Tesco did not even know that two of these four factories were manufacturing their clothes. They have therefore never visited these two factories and hence ethically audited them.

Both suppliers and Tesco have denied all the allegations and there is no suggestion that Tesco ever knew about any child workers. In fact, the supermarket said it abhors child labour and said it's at the front of industry efforts to stamp it out.

But this report raises serious questions about Tesco's ability to enforce the ethical standards it claims to hold.

Tesco are less than happy at our revelations. They have had lawyers crawling all over the allegations. But we shall be airing the film at seven and you can make up your own mind.

Whenever I have spoken to TV people about my project they have often mentioned a desire for film of what they call the "Jihadi Rap Scene" rumoured to exist in the Wembley area. You may remember the very profesionally made, if disturbing Dirty Kuffar. You're probably not suprised that I'm up for filming a bit of this so I went to Wembley at the weekend for a bit of a scout around.

In Wembley I found a huge South Indian community, with a large concentration of vegetarian restaurants. Looking through the door of one of them took me straight back to India so I had a quick Thali which I could hardly finish due to the shock of so much chilli for breakfast.

Round the corner I found a large mosque. I didn't go inside at first, instead I went to an Islamic bookshop next door where I asked a Muslim woman (who incidentally was wearing a veil) about "Islamic rap".

"Mecca to Medina" she told me were very popular and were from London but she didn't have any of their CDs in stock.

I walked back and forth outside the mosque for a bit, and finally got the courage to go inside.

"Do you know anything about an Islamic rap scene in this area?" I asked one of the kids.

He took me upstairs to meet the general secretary.

"How should I greet you? Sallam aleikum?" he asked.

"However you like mate. Wallekum Sallam." I answered.Mohammad Hoda turned out to be a cheerful eccentric Indian Muslim from Bihar, sitting with a man he introduced as a professor of Sociology from Lucknow who had a proper Lucknow moustache. Within minutes I realised that both would look great on film.

General Secretary Hoda was proud of his Bihari roots, and said that he had looke through all the major religions and philosophies which sprang from this area before choosing Islam. He thought Islam was the original anti-capitalism. He said that communism in Russia had only lasted 80 years because it had no foundation. Islam was the real communism. If you have enough food for six, you share it with another five people. Many untouchables had become Muslims in India after sharing food with Muslims. I asked him what he thought of Jack Staws comments about veils, he said he agreed with Mr. Straw.

"I should see you, you should see me."

He had the article cut out in front of him.

I liked his endearing Indian attitude and he invited me to come back and film with him whenever I liked. He didn't know anything about a local rap scene though. On the way home I passed our old squat (in this film) which I was pleased to find the council had actually started renovating. Happy memories.

I went back to Wemley the next day. I've got to leave this a bit cryptic now, but I think I might have had a bit more luck...

October 01, 2006

I finally bumped into jonty Skrufff last night, after being on his mailing list for a long while. The club wasn't so busy which was OK cos we got a chance to speak. I was expecting someone bigger and more "arrogant DJ" like for some reason. Probably cos of the Ministry of Sound conection, though I've never been there. Anyway, a really straight up guy, with a top mailout and a great sound.